Science

26 articles

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, approximately 20 percent of the world is affected by brain disorders. At MIT, there are a number of groups dedicated to studying brain disorders specifically. Some labs focus on the genetic origins of neurological disorders, while others use imaging to predict and respond to indications of mental health conditions.

Ibrahim Cissé, Assistant Professor of Physics and principal investigator of Cissé Laboratory, has been interested in science for as long as he can remember — he was "very curious as a child, wanted to find out how things worked," and loved watching scientific Hollywood movies. As a young boy, he converted a storage room in his house into a laboratory, where he would tinker with electronics, taking things apart to build creations of his own.

The Electrochemical Materials Lab focuses on finding new ways to process ceramic and glass, leveraging new methods and design paradigms towards new device functionalities that have the potential to make our phones and computers smaller, faster, and smarter than ever before.

Researchers at the Nanomechanics Laboratory strive to utilize the mechanical properties of nanomaterials to study the progression and to understand the mechanisms of sickle cell disease and other life-threatening diseases.

The MIT programs in Anthropology, History, and Science, Technology and Society (STS) invited a multidisciplinary panel of experts specializing in topics relating to the interaction of emerging technologies with society and government to speak about their work to interested attendees.

BeeMee was developed by Niccolo Pescetelli, a human psychologist working to understand the dynamics of human collective intelligence, and Dr. Iyad Rahwan, a scientist who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the MIT Media Lab. This immersive social event invites Internet users to work together to stop AI Zookd from succeeding in his mission.

After a prolific residence in MIT's Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which included developing a super-resolution microscope to look at nanoscale resolution of building blocks of brain, Deblina Sarkar is seeking out a new challenge in forming the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek research group to engineer nanoelectronics for the human brain.

Tonio Buonassisi, the PI at MIT’s Photovoltaics Lab, recently took a trip to the Folgefonna National Park in Norway. There, he hiked across nearly 200 square km of glaciers. Under the crunch of snow with each step he took, he could hear the water rushing below him — more water than was normal for the ebbs and flows of a glacier’s natural lifetime — a constant reminder that his time to act was running out.

Justin Solomon, Principal Investigator of the Geometric Data Processing Group at MIT, is a prominent member of the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG), a cohort of Boston-based computer scientists and mathematicians that are leveraging modern computing power to study the problem of fairness in redistricting with a level of quantitative rigor that has not been possible until recently.

Artificial intelligence's meaning is vague, and its definition remains fluid as the field evolves. The Tech interviewed three PhD candidates at CSAIL, LIDS and EECS/EEMS/INCCI at MIT on how they interpret the science, and how they work to advance it.

Professor Christopher ‘Kit’ Cummins, Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, has been interested in phosphorus and its processing for industrial use for many years. Cummins’ lab is exploring alternative ways and options of optimizing phosphate processing.

Immunotherapy research is a burgeoning field that aims to help our own immune systems clear the disease in a personalized manner, and for some individuals, the method shows much promise. However, for others, this approach is ineffective. The Spranger Lab hopes to understand these varying responses to immunotherapy.

Part of the Masic Group’s current work focuses on analyzing ancient structural materials, hoping to draw inspiration from ancient materials as well as biological ones to inform the production of new materials.